FEW authoritarian leaders have been willing to gracefully relinquish the reigns of power. This reluctance has been reinforced by the experiences of former leaders who have endured legal challenges, ridicule and worse. Out of power, their diminishing number of friends among Western leaders are belatedly embarrassed by the less than salutary company they used to keep.

Enter Singapore's irrepressible Lee Kuan Yew. Although never tainted with the odium of a Marcos or a Soeharto, the former prime minister of the one-party dominant state has long been a critic of liberal democracy and vociferous champion of Asian values. After relinquishing the prime ministership in 1990, the cabinet position of Senior Minister was created to ensure his political longevity.

As Senior Minister, Lee is well positioned to ensure that the political ground rules and the direction of public policy do not stray too far from the fundamentals set by him as prime minister over the previous two decades. Lee's fundamentals include the minimisation of state welfare spending, maintaining the numerical dominance of the Chinese community, sustaining a formidable military establishment that is technologically second to none in South-East Asia, maintaining the political hegemony of the People's Action Party (PAP) and its corporatist relations with pivotal groups in civil society.

Paternalistically cautioning Singaporeans of his political immortality lest they drift too far into the fanciful realms of overturning the PAP's fundamentals, Lee warned in the late 1980s: "Those of you who believe that when I have left the government as prime minister that I have gone into permanent retirement should have their heads examined."

Observers of Indonesian politics are aware that some of Soeharto's advisers were tinkering with Lee's ingenious model for ensuring political longevity many years before his ouster. However, adopting the Lee model would not have saved Soeharto due to his inability to fulfil a key prerequisite: widespread public and market perception of passing the leadership baton with a robust economy in place.

In Malaysia, to the north of Singapore, recent statements made by senior politicians of the ruling United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) suggest that the Lee model is being seriously considered to allow the Prime Minister, Dr Mahathir, to eventually leave the position without fear of retribution, stemming from the handling of former deputy prime minister Anwar Ibrahim's sacking and subsequent conviction. If adopted, the Lee model is unlikely to succeed in Malaysia because of the dynamics within UMNO, distinguishing it from the highly centralised and controlled, technocrat-led PAP in Singapore. Furthermore, despite Mahathir's economic achievements, his standing within the party and particularly within the Malay community has been marred by his vindictive humiliation of Anwar. In traditional Malay political culture, a leader may undermine and marginalise his or her political enemy, but never in an overtly humiliating manner.

In Singapore, the humiliation suffered by the more adversarial opposition politicians and former PAP leaders, who have dared to transgress the parameters of the politically permissible, is very much a part of the political culture. They have been soundly humiliated by the casting of aspersions on their personalities and private lives and through lawsuits which have left many financially and professionally ruined. The risky nature of venturing into opposition politics has been clearly conveyed to Singaporeans.

Lee is in Australia to promote the second volume of his memoir, From Third World to First. It has been applauded particularly by the more conservative politicians and academics from the "realist" school of international relations. Not surprisingly, a doyen of this school, Henry Kissinger, has contributed a foreword. Typical of their beliefs is a reliance on a strong military capability. Alarmingly, Singapore's continued arms build-up and joint military research and arms production with Israel have assisted in fuelling regional insecurity and precipitating an arms race. In the arguably more complicated post-Cold War environment of international and regional politics, Lee's appraisal of international politics may be somewhat outdated.

Generally received with circumspection, particularly in the more democratic East Asian nations, the warm response accorded to Lee by various quarters in the West is all the more remarkable. No doubt the projection of Singapore as a modern, secular, industrialised nation with a GNP per capita figure that has long surpassed nations like Australia and Britain, and its energetic promotion of trade liberalisation, has won Lee and the PAP government considerable admiration. At a time when the regional economic crisis has sapped the enthusiasm by the less industrialised nations for trade liberalism, Singapore's support for the free-trade agenda of the WTO, ASEAN Free Trade Area and APEC has remained unshakable.

Singapore's free trade agreement with Australia is in tandem with other bilateral free-trade agreements it has signed with Mexico, New Zealand, South Korea, the United States, Canada and Japan. By blending these bilateral trade agreements into larger regional trade accords, the Singapore government hopes to accelerate the process of trade liberalisation. Singapore has also proven to be a reliable champion of Australia's interests within ASEAN.

Lee's political longevity has allowed him to assume the role of a cultural filter and diplomatic bridge between East and West. However, some words of caution for those from the West hoping to understand East Asia through the lens of Lee, who represents the East Asia of the past. Most of the more industrialised societies of East Asia have begun to move away from Singapore's authoritarian political structures towards greater pluralism. Singapore may be economically First World but its political system is more akin to authoritarian Third World nations. Paradoxically, Lee and the PAP Government are fast developing a reputation as political recalcitrants and regional laggards.

Lily Zubaidah Rahim, the author of The Singapore Dilemma (OUP Press, 1998), lectures at Sydney University's School of Economics and Political Science.